The Muralist: A Novel

by B. A. Shapiro

  She looked over at him with what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “Someone’s been going through my mail.”

  41

  LEE

  Lee and Mark sat on the stoop in front of Alizée’s building. Alizée was expecting them and the night was chilly, but instead of going up, Mark had suggested they share a cigarette first. He wanted her help convincing Alizée to go to Bloom Sanatorium, but Lee wasn’t having any of it.

  “It’ll be horrible with her gone,” Mark said, “but it’ll be worse for her if she stays.”

  Lee took the cigarette from him, inhaled, and handed it back. He was panicking, overreacting. “She’s having a tough time, sure, but it’s nothing some good news from Europe won’t cure. She just needs to handle it in her own way. You suggest this now and I guarantee it’ll backfire. She’s fragile. You never know what might set her off.”

  “And that’s exactly the problem,” he said. “I’m worried about what she might do to herself if nothing changes.”

  “That’s crazy. The poor girl’s exhausted. Worried sick about her family. Furious that she hasn’t been able to help them. Feeling impotent. She doesn’t need to go anywhere. She just needs to paint, to finish Montage. To believe she’s doing something to help.”

  “What if you’re wrong?”

  She worried about this. “What if taking her away from her work is the worst thing for her right now?”

  “Have you noticed the marks on her arms?”

  Lee shook her head and motioned for the cigarette.

  “Rows of them. Some are scabbed over. Or thin lines of red. Slightly curved.”

  “What are you saying?”

  His voice was husky. “She’s been digging her fingernails into her skin so hard she’s drawing blood.”

  Lee swallowed hard and handed the cigarette back to him. Could this be true? “Bug bites maybe?”

  “I knew a girl in college who used a pocketknife to carve hash marks on her thighs. She said she did it so she’d know she was alive.”

  “Alizée knows she’s alive.” Even if sometimes she looked out at the world with dead eyes.

  Mark leaned against the railing and blew smoke skyward. “Jack says Bloom’s a good place. Not so much a mental asylum as a hospital where you can get away from the world. Out of your own head, was how he put it. He said there are all kinds of regular people there. That it was actually fun. Claims the doctors helped him a lot.”

  “Except that he started drinking again three months after he got out.”

  “It’s the part about her smiling that gets me.” Mark crushed the cigarette into the concrete without asking Lee if she wanted another drag. “As if she were proud, Bill said. Happy even, that someone might be going through her mail.”

  “That’s Bill’s interpretation,” Lee reminded him.

  “Bill’s not prone to exaggeration. If anything, he tips the other way.”

  This was true. Lee strained to find other arguments that might sway Mark from starting this conversation with Alizée.

  “Bill said he looked the envelopes over carefully,” Mark continued. “That they seemed perfectly normal to him.”

  Lee took another stab. “Maybe we just need to convince her to take it a little easier.”

  “We’ve been telling her that for months and getting nowhere!” Mark exploded. “She won’t sleep, she won’t eat. She thinks she can fly around like a ghost and that someone’s following her and reading her mail!” He punched his left fist into his right palm. “You understand what a psychiatrist would say about that kind of behavior, don’t you?”

  “It’s not that—”

  “What if she decides her fingernails aren’t enough? That she needs a knife?” Mark stood. “We can’t take the chance of letting this go on. Even for a few more weeks. She’s too unstable.” He touched Lee’s shoulder. “I’m scared for her.”

  They headed up the stairs. Suddenly, Lee was scared, too.

  Alizée greeted them as always, pleasant and thankful for their help, but distant, preoccupied. She kissed Mark and smiled at Lee, then immediately returned to her painting. Lee and Mark took up where they’d left off the previous night.

  They continued this way for over an hour, then Alizée put down her brush and said, “I’ve got another favor to ask you both.”

  “Oh?” Lee asked as naturally as she could. This wasn’t going to be good.

  “I went to the library yesterday,” Alizée began, growing animated for the first time that evening. “Met with the director, talked over the plans for hanging Light in America.”

  “I knew you’d change your mind,” Mark said. “This is swell—”

  “I found a way in—and a way out.” Alizée was clearly pleased with this feat. “They’re going to bring Light in America to the rotunda before hanging it, going to prep the walls, put it up a couple of days before the fête. So I’m going to bring the Montage panels to the warehouse and roll them inside of Light in America right before they move it, which is all fine, and I even talked the director into hanging velvet over the Light in America panels so no one can see them before the fête, and that way no one will see Montage until the draping is pulled off!”

  Lee and Mark looked at her with gaping mouths.

  Alizée took a deep, excited breath. “There’s a door, a door into the basement that no one uses. It’s at the back of the library. I couldn’t believe it when I found it. The exact thing I was looking for! And then the bookshelves! It’s meant to be, I tell you. Clearly meant to be.”

  Alizée was making less and less sense, acting more as Mark feared and less as Lee hoped.

  “That way we can go in and out with no one seeing us!” Alizée cried. “Isn’t that amazing?”

  “We?” Mark edged closer to Alizée.

  “Into the library!” she chortled. “That’s the favor. Obviously, I can’t hang the four panels by myself, but I think that the three of us should be able to do it easily. They’re actually not that heavy, and we can smuggle in all the materials and tools that we’ll need through the door I found and hide them in the basement behind the bookshelves like the panels beforehand, and then we go over after the library’s closed the night before the fête, and like I told you before, I’ve got some glue that isn’t too thick so that it won’t hurt Light when we put Montage up on top of it.”

  Alizée’s breath was coming in gasps. “I don’t think it should take more than a few hours. We’re in at midnight, out by three, and no one will be the wiser until the next night when it’s revealed to all!”

  Lee had absolutely no idea what to say. Alizée’s ramble had more than a hint of madness to it. Bookshelves? Velvet curtains? Back doors?

  Mark cleared his throat. “Zée, you’re looking a little tired.”

  Alizée stared at him blankly.

  “Tired,” he repeated. “You look tired.”

  “Will you help me?” Alizée’s eyes swung from Mark to Lee and then back to Mark.

  “It’s impressive you figured this all out,” Lee said. “All those details. Very—”

  “Will you or won’t you?”

  “Sure we will.” Mark turned to Lee. “Right?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Lee quickly agreed. “Sure we will.”

  “Thank you,” Alizée said, reaching for her paintbrush. Her face looked so haggard Lee didn’t know how long she could go on.

  “So now that that’s all agreed,” Mark suggested, “how about the three of us sit for a minute and have a beer?”

  “You two go ahead,” Alizée said, already focused on her painting. “I’ve got to finish this section tonight.”

  Lee shook her head at Mark. After that barely comprehensible babble about the library, she didn’t think this was the right time to bring up Bloom. Even if the babble suggested Alizée needed to go there.

  Mark cleared his throat again. “Bill said you think someone’s been reading your mail.”

  Alizée continued to paint.

  He hesitated. �
��I, ah, I hate to ask, but are you sure this is really happening? That you’re not, ah, misconstruing things? You haven’t been sleeping, and that can confuse a lot of things.”

  Alizée stiffened but kept painting.

  “Maybe it would be good for you to take a little break,” Mark offered. “A rest. Away from all this.”

  A barely perceptible shake of her head.

  “You told me about the flying around,” he continued. “The mirror . . .”

  Alizée started to laugh, an oddly vacant sound. “Oh, I can just see you all at the table at the Shop, huddled together and whispering about whether poor Alizée has lost her mind. ‘First she cried and then she laughed.’ ‘She took a walk at night.’ ‘She looked at me funny.’ Well, I’m happy to tell you that it’s not true. I see reality as clearly as you do. Perhaps more clearly.”

  “Maybe a break isn’t such a bad idea,” Lee said. “You wouldn’t even have to go anywhere, you could—”

  “Or you could go to Bloom,” Mark interrupted. “Just like Jack did. Get lots of rest, lots to eat, and then you’ll be able to come back and finish up the murals.”

  Alizée picked up a dab of yellow from her palette and touched it lightly against the gnarled trunk of a tree. She stood back. Added a wisp of a line rising to the leaves, skimmed a few branches. When she turned and looked at them, her cheeks were flushed a deep red, but when she spoke, her voice was hushed. “I appreciate all the help you’re giving me,” she said. “I do. And I thank you for that. But just to be clear, I’m not going anywhere.”

  42

  DANIELLE, 2015

  It was with a bit of trepidation at traveling alone, and more than a little at what I might or might not find, that I landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Also with a heavy dose of exhaustion: It was 7:30 a.m. Paris time, 1:30 a.m. Dani time. More than seven hours wrenched into a seat between an overweight woman who kept leaning in—and not in the good way—and a teenage boy who sang along to the rap songs on his iPod the entire trip. I kid you not.

  After I cleared customs, I hesitated before taking a cab to my hotel. I wasn’t used to spending money so frivolously, but I reminded myself that this was Grand’s gift, that she’d want me to enjoy myself. I handed the driver what seemed like an exorbitant fare, roughly a hundred dollars with tip. Didn’t seem exorbitant, was exorbitant. My room wasn’t ready and wouldn’t be until noon. I contemplated stretching out on one of the red couches ringing the lobby but figured this would be perceived as a gauche American thing to do. Instead, I handed my luggage over to the bellhop and headed out to the street.

  I picked this hotel on rue du Roule because it was near the river and walking distance to the Louvre and the Paris Holocaust Memorial, which I discovered contains the largest cache of Holocaust-related materials in France. The Drancy deportation camp museum would entail a train or bus trip. I’d been in Paris a bunch of times; we came here a lot when I was a kid, and my high school graduation present was a bus trip around Europe. But I hadn’t been back since. The Holocaust Memorial didn’t open until 2005 and the Drancy museum until 2012, so I’d never been to either one. Not that my family would have visited had they existed.

  When I got outside, the sky was gray, as it so often is in Paris, but my spirits began to rise nonetheless. Rue du Roule is narrow and one way; bicycles, mopeds, even cars, were parked on the sidewalk, as there was no room for them on the street. Men in green uniforms swept what little asphalt there was with their green plastic brooms, deftly avoiding vehicles as well as the cell-phone-glued pedestrians streaming off to work in their fabulous shoes. Women in impossible heels, perfectly wrapped scarves, hair swept up in ways both chic and effortless-looking, although I guessed these coifs were quite time-consuming. Men dressed much more colorfully than at home.

  I took a deep breath, caught the mingled scents of perfume, motorbike fumes, baking bread, and pain d’amande from the boulangerie across the street. Ah, Paris. The cream-colored facade of the hotel, which matched just about all the buildings on the block, was laced with wrought-iron flower boxes spilling red carnations. The screech of motorbikes and mopeds, the rumble of buses on a nearby boulevard, the rolling vowels of the French language. A beguiling assault on the senses. Thanks, Grand.

  My meeting with Jordan Washor at the Louvre wasn’t for two more days. What to do first. Sightsee? The Holocaust Memorial? Drancy? I figured I should leave sightseeing for last so I’d have something to look forward to if my other endeavors didn’t pan out, but it was by far the most appealing.

  I decided I didn’t have to decide and turned south toward the Seine on rue de Rivoli, a wide and busy street, also one way, lined with clothing stores, shoe stores, banks, cafes, and the old Samaritaine department store. Tourists, Parisians, taxis, cars, motorbikes, a cacophony of image and sound. I passed a Métro stop, the exit littered with discarded tickets. Where were the men in their green suits?

  And then the Louvre was on my left. I stood in the expansive courtyard, taking in the massive Italian Renaissance museum with its distinctively French design: the vertical lines, the elongated windows, the double-sloped roof. Cream-colored, of course. Fountains, of course. Hordes of tourists, of course. I was pulled toward I. M. Pei’s fabled glass pyramid by the early-morning crowd, but stepped aside before I reached the entrance.

  I was too tired to waste the money on a ticket. I’d need at least a full day inside, and this was definitely not the day for it. It was home to some of the greatest art ever created, and I was, after all, still an artist. I pulled out my cell and hit Jordan’s number in the hope he had some good news about the squares.

  “Great to hear from you, Dani,” Jordan said in a rush. “All hell’s broken out here, and we’ve been working twenty-four/seven. I don’t even know what day it is.” He paused. “Oh, shit, is our meeting today?”

  I laughed. “No, not until Friday.”

  “That’s a re—” He mumbled something to someone else. “Good. Good,” he said to me, clearly distracted. “What time did we say? Can we do it over lunch? I’m totally jammed.”

  “That’s fine,” I assured him, although I was disappointed. If he’d found any squares he surely would have mentioned it. Most likely, he hadn’t had a chance to give them a thought.

  When Jordan hung up, I checked my watch. It was almost ten, and I had at least two more hours before I could fend off my jet lag with a nap and shower. It was more than enough time to visit the Holocaust Memorial. It wasn’t far, near the Hôtel de Ville, the Marais district, the old Jewish quarter. I hesitated, then turned in that direction.

  I got a little lost, which was okay with me; I wasn’t sure I was up to coming face-to-face with the world’s worst genocide. As I wandered, I was, as always, charmed by the city, its magnificent architecture, and this area of sixteenth-century buildings had many of its finest. Unfortunately, some of the buildings’ histories weren’t the finest.

  Like Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, a church begun in the twelfth century that grew into a brilliant blend of Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance elements. Beautiful to look at, which I appreciated as I stood in front of it, but it was also at the center of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre—a riot in which thousands of Protestants were killed by a mob of Catholic Parisians. Sixteenth century, twentieth century, twenty-first century. Some things never change.

  When I reached the Mémorial de la Shoah—Shoah is Hebrew for “Holocaust”—I was struck by how cold and hostile it looked, walled in, foreboding. But clearly that was purposeful. The outer courtyard contained a huge cylinder, evocative of the Auschwitz chimneys, chiseled with the names of the European concentration camps to which French Jews were sent. Ahead of me was the Wall of Names. I cautiously approached.

  Seventy-five thousand names carved into stone, the French Jews deported to Nazi camps. Only twenty-five hundred had returned. Three percent. And there was space on the last slab for more names to be added if more deaths and deportations were discovered. How forward-thinkin
g. How hideous to have to think that way. The names were inscribed along with date of birth; place of birth; and the number, date, and destination of the convoy in which they rode to their deaths. Row upon row upon row. Panel upon panel upon panel.

  I couldn’t look for Benoit. Not yet. Instead, I stumbled through the barred doors into the museum, taken aback by its light and spaciousness, almost an affront. So many photographs. So many shoes. Eyeglasses. So many suitcases packed with clothes never worn. A sham. “One valise per person,” the Nazis had said. “Bring what you need.” And then they stole it all. Why so many eyeglasses?

  There was a crypt in the shape of a Jewish star, black marble, topped with an eternal flame. It was filled with ashes from the camps, the Warsaw ghetto, too. Ashes now buried beneath dirt brought in from Israel, kaddish finally said for the now-nameless dead.

  Even worse was a room filled with drawers. Drawer upon drawer upon orderly drawer, a card catalogue of law-abiding French Jews—grocers and carpenters, doctors and lawyers, students and housewives—kept by the French police. Parisians ordered by the Germans to register as Jews in 1940, picked up, and herded into trains over the following years, herded into oblivion. Some of those who refused to comply with the order weren’t taken away because they weren’t known to the authorities. Saved by bucking the rules.

  And then there were the children. Photos of eleven thousand murdered children: they grin; they cavort; they hug their brothers and cousins, their mothers; they smile shyly. I sat down hard on a bench and started to cry. A woman lightly touched my shoulder and handed me a box of tissues. I took them without meeting her eyes. She said nothing and moved on.

  43

  ALIZÉE, 1940

  A letter arrived from Tante. The handwriting was frenzied. No date and no salutation. Alizée read it three times before she fully took it in.

  I know you are doing everything you can, but you must find a visa for Alain. Immediately. We are going into hiding tomorrow. With Oncle’s arrest and Henri’s disappearance, we feel it is our only option. When you get the visa, contact the man I told you had helped us before. He knows where we are and will get it to us. I cannot impress upon you how vital this is. I am not being hysterical when I tell you that if we do not get out now, we will die. I love you. I have always loved you. I will always love you.